


Liz Shaw: UNIT's Other Doctor

by John_lzhc



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Awesome Ladies Ficathon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-18
Updated: 2011-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-18 08:07:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/186763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_lzhc/pseuds/John_lzhc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the <a href="http://hazyflights.livejournal.com/199061.html">Awesome Ladies Ficathon</a></p><p>She's the one that walked away, the one that knew she could be better without him. But she's still the one they call when they're out of options.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liz Shaw: UNIT's Other Doctor

“Good morning, office of Dr Shaw?” Linda asked sweetly as she plucked the receiver from it's cradle before the second ring.

“Major Hansen for Dr Shaw.” the caller snapped. Ah, one of _those_ calls.

\---

There's twenty years or so when it's like he's dropped off the face of the earth (he probably has. Boring few decades, maybe) and things get quiet. Back in the day it seamed like every tuesday was 'come invade earth day' for the local aliens, but these days? Zilch. Na-da. UNIT has a full year without a single hostile encounter, before the UN starts threatening to slash it's budget.

But gradually, month by month, year by year, the incidents do stack up. The aliens threat is still out there, and earth still needs a front-line-of-defence (and they aren’t going to talk about Torchwood, thankyou very much) so UNIT ticks over, adapts. They've got a lot of cumulative experience, what with the whirlwind that was the seventies, but a lot of the experience is very centred on being pointed in a direction and told when to shoot. So every now and then, they put in a call to an expert.

\---

“Dr Shaw? Your secret service men are on the phone again.”

Of all the things Linda did that annoyed Liz, talking about the 'secret service men' on the intercom when she had students in the room was amongst the worst. She probably thought it was funny.

\---

 

Liz Shaw once spent the most exhilarating year of her life passing an arrogant madman test tubes and telling him how brilliant he was. Well, put it that way...

She was shouted at, shot at, and generally threatened by alien menaces, too; not to mention putting in a hand saving the world a good few times. And at the end of the year she was _still_ handing him test-tubes and (rather backhandedly) telling him how brilliant he was, and her own laughably cutting-edge research was languishing in an office miles and miles away.

\---

“I presume you have a good reason to call me?” Liz snapped, still peeved by Linda's lack of tact and the worried looks the two PHD hopefuls had been shooting her when they left.

“You see, there's this... sort of... 'incident' developing in the Cotswold's and the Brigadier though you could help.”

\---

After a night of white wine with a old friend, full of ranting that she hadn't studied for years to be some glorified lab assistant to a lunatic with a screw driver, she turned up at headquarters bright and early with a cardboard box and a headache, and taken herself back to Cambridge with what little was hers to take.

They'd tried to requestion her back the next week, but she'd begged a few favours from the college Head, and had a few private, scorching words with the Brigadier, and UNIT had left her alone. Until the phonecalls started.

\---

She ends up in the Cotswold's (because the thrill of academic adventure never gets old, but sometimes it benefits form a little contrast) solving an alien-murder mystery with a young medical student who's involvement UNIT won't properly explain, but who's flippant nonchalance in the face of extra-terrestrial involvement (“Evil alien killer. Right”) gives it away anyway. She wonders, with relief (and indignation), if she's being replaced.

She gets back to her Cambridge office at nearly midnight, when Linda is- yes, reorganising the bookcase again (she came back from a UNIT jaunt with a bullet wound once, and the poor girl's never quite gotten over the horror of it). She sends her annoying but long-suffering secretary home and just takes a moment to be still.

It still feels like handing test-tubes and telling him he's brilliant, some days. Filling in while he's momentary out of the room. It should be insulting, irritating at least. But then she thinks of the lazy afternoons spent handing him actual test-tubes while he elaborated on the exact way to shift a Gooli nest, or disarm an Arcadian bomb, wheeling her back in every time her attention wandered and asking her questions like it was a lecture not a rant... and she wonders.


End file.
